


let's keep playing this game with your pink socks to remind us how ("we must be ghosts to you")

by kwritten



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst, Domestic, F/M, Ghosts, Minor Character Death, Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:00:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a/n:  prompt by vergoldung : Jeroline- and yet, in spite of everything, we persevere (probably not exactly what you wanted exactly, but my domesticity!Jeroline-kink needed to be satisfied)</p><p>*added a slight annendum to the title due to the blatant use of a Doctor Who quote midway through the piece that I neglected to properly attribute. Also - it gives the non-Jeroline shippers an idea of what is going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's keep playing this game with your pink socks to remind us how ("we must be ghosts to you")

 

  
_It's not supposed to be like this._

 

 

_Like water under the bridge_  only that's the last thing that she meant and when he said it there was an echo of pain that will never leave them. Because the water flows and the bodies keep floating by but they're always standing on solid ground even if the earth won't stop spinning.

 

 

 

_You're mixing your metaphors._

 

 

 

_You mixed the colours and the whites again._

 

 

 

He has pink socks for the next week.

 

 

 

 

And just when she's decided that it's the remains of her red blouse and not the dried blood encrusting their lives, a new package of crew cut white cotton socks is sitting on the bed.

 

 

 

 

She chokes in air as if her body has forgotten how to use oxygen (of course it has). He finds her outside on the curb, elbow deep in stink and leftovers and decay, pulling out the pink socks one by one. She begins to throw them at him, tears streaming down her face.

 

 

 

She licks salt from the corner of her mouth and she wishes it was blood and he wishes it was blood, too – she can see it in his dark eyes watching her tongue dart out and disappear.

 

 

 

They are always a lifetime deep in decay.

 

 

They are always pretending not to crave it. The blood and the thrill and the running and the stillness that living can bring when you’re really living.

 

 

(She stopped pretending to want to feel him run smoothly across her tongue and down her throat their third night together – he stopped pretending not to want her to dig into his flesh with her teeth the first time he kissed her.)

 

 

There are pink socks littering the yard and she may be screaming at him.

 

Like when Matt disappeared and Elena left again and her mother died and died and died and she was always dying and dead and living so the younger brother moved in so she’d have someone to scream and rail at.

 

Because that’s what mourning is.

 

 

This time.

 

 

Every time is different. For her. Always a fresh gaping wound that won’t heal and she’s so covered in wounds it’s a wonder there’s any flesh left.

 

Tonight mourning is needing someone to throw pink crew socks at in the twilight.

 

 

 

_It isn’t right._

 

 

And it might be a whisper though it may be a scream and she doesn’t much care right then.

 

 

He stands there maddeningly stoic.

 

 

Sometimes she fears, when his arms are around her and she’s gasping into his open mouth, if he’s looking behind her at one of them. At the ghosts that linger always on her mind and in his vision. But she just pulls him closer and her fingernails dig a little deeper and he always lays himself bare but it’s never enough and why can’t he close his eyes, he sees too much. Always sees too much.

 

 

The dead.

 

 

The undead.

 

 

The lack of life in her with her legs wrapped around his waist.

 

 

 

_It isn’t right. They’re too clean._

 

 

 

 

Caroline is nothing if not forthright. Nothing if not direct.

Even when she’s talking in messy midnight metaphors.

 

 

 

She contemplated destroying more of that blinding white. Taking the whole lot and throwing it in with her red blouse. Opening her veins and watch the blood trickle into the water, churning into the foam and destroying the act of cleanliness.

 

 

They say cleanliness is next to godliness.

 

 

Where is your god now?

 

 

 

This is better – a whiteness stained with the decay of red, the stench of yesterday’s takeout, the remains of her tears. This is what they trod upon every day that they walk around this town. She wants to see it. She wants it there, right beside her nice white lace nightgown. On top of the laundry basket. A reminder of the death that hangs around her.

 

So mundane, socks. They could mean the world.

 

They could make the world make sense again.

 

 

 

Pink is the colour of babies and sugar and parties and soft things.

 

 

In what life?

 

 

Today pink is washed-out red – is a daily reminder of blood and death and tears and ghosts. A reminder of someone trying to hide the blood.

 

Of life no longer living.

 

 

(Even if she's sobbed over dried blood on white enough times to know that blood dries brown no matter how much you wish it wouldn't and it always looks just like death but pink is better because it's what blood should be because blood is life and the decay of life shouldn't be brown, it should fade and fade. Red fading slowly into white - getting more and more pink all the time until there is nothing but blank whiteness. Brown is a scar is a reminder and pink is the promise and maybe this metaphor is slipping but her hands have already found her goal and anyway, it's her damn metaphor. Whoever said metaphors were supposed to make sense?)

 

As if he weren’t enough of a reminder of ghosts.

 

 

As if her ageless face in the mirror weren’t enough of a reminder of ghosts.

 

 

 

 

_Are we all ghosts to you?_

 

He asked her once in the kitchen in his bare feet and bare chest washing the dishes and cooking breakfast and he makes a mean French toast and she laughed and wiggled her toes at him from her seat on the counter, her gaze focused on her phone.

 

_You tell me. You see more of them than I do._

 

 

 

That kiss that day never left her. Breathless and hard. Wanting. Desperate.

 

 

As if he needed to prove to himself that she was solid flesh.

 

 

 

 

_I’m crying over a garbage can._

 

 

 

 

_You’re crying over a garbage can._

 

 

 

 

She’ll go inside. She’ll take a shower. Maybe he’ll run a bath. In the morning, the yard will be clean and maybe she’ll wake to the sound of the lawn mower or the smell of bacon or just to his warm chest pressed into her back.

 

 

 

 

She’ll wake up and for an instant they’ll be completely normal. The young couple at the end of the block with matching jogging outfits and a pet cat and the white picket fence, who eats takeout from the same place every Wednesday and the place knows their order and they’re always so friendly to the neighbors and brought more than their share of food to the block party.

 

 

 

Totally perfectly normal.

 

 

 

 

Two ghosts, playing at normal.

 

It was always going to be like this.

Maybe even without death on the table, this is what they were headed towards anyway.

 

 

Would it have felt as hollow?

 

 

 

 

Maybe even when they were alive the first time.... Maybe it had always been a game she had played without thinking… though there’s no way to count the number of times they’ve died and died now. It seemed sometimes as though life was a long way away, a distant memory of something she read in a book once.

 

 

 

_It isn’t supposed to be like this._

 

 

It's supposed to be real, not a game.

It isn’t supposed to feel this empty.

 

 

 

Maybe in the morning she’ll give in and they’ll disappear and she’ll change her hair and he’ll call her ‘darlin’ with a drawl and she’ll giggle because that’s her part now. They’re already playing a game they weren’t made for or remade for so how hard could a new game be at this point.

 

 

 

Maybe in the morning she’ll be ready to leave behind the laundry and the takeout and the matching jogging pants.

 

 

What would they be giving up, anyway?

 

 

 

Hosting the next book club night.

 

 

 

Seeing that look on his face like he's already gone and she can't even touch him and her reflection in the mirror makes her go mad, but they still cling to each other because they taught themselves to play and as long as the other one is on the board, the game will keep on going.

 

 

 

_How is it supposed to be?_

 

 

 

 

Maybe in the morning he’ll drag her out by the arm and they’ll go on an adventure. Visit Rebekah in Italy or his sister in Brazil. Maybe in the morning he won’t take ‘maybe’ or ‘tomorrow’ for an answer and pull her out of the fantasy. Maybe they’ll take the pink socks and laugh at their stint at the town’s darling couple.

 

 

Maybe in the morning she won't be desperate for something to fill her busy mind with, something to focus wildly on, something to cling onto even if it is hollow.

 

 

 

_Not like this._

 

 

 

Or maybe they’ll just keep continuing on and she’ll cling to those fleeting moments of normalcy as long as she can.

 

 

Because he’ll let her.

 

Because he’ll lie long past the mirrors let him.

 

 

 

 

_Kiss me, then._

 

 

_I smell like … so gross._

 

 

_It’s kinda cute._

 

 

_Me screaming and crying over a garbage can and smelling like rotting food is cute?_

 

 

 

_No. Just you._

 

 

 

 

Maybe normal is relative. Maybe normal is his lips on hers and bare feet on wet grass in the twilight. Maybe normal is wherever his arms are around hers and she isn’t pulling away.

 

 

 

Maybe normal can be whatever they want it to be and maybe it doesn’t much matter anymore.

 

 

 

Maybe surviving is the new normal.

_So am I doomed to a life of pink socks?_

 

 

 

 

Maybe the metaphor wasn’t as clear as she thought it was.

 

 

 

_Maybe._  but she was breathless and done talking and let’s just get inside and out of these clothes now please.

 

 

 

Maybe they didn’t need the metaphor to make sense of life anymore. Maybe living was his heart beating against her chest and hair wrapped around his fingers.

 

 

The next morning, the grass was a slight shade of pink in patches.

 

And Caroline laughed.

Maybe all she needed was one last metaphor to break away in her hands so that she could float away and they could find their own meaning.


End file.
